installed an array of “100 or more” RFID readers so that students’
movements can be tracked whenever and wherever they are on school
premises. ... To
make sure students actually carry their RFID badges, they’ll have to use
them for all purchases of school lunches as well as for mandatory
attendance checks.

This is not just Big-Brotherish but stupid, as if kids won't readily
carry around other students' ID cards so their friends can sneak away. Calling them "Smart Student ID Cards" is outright Orwellian. Just because schools choose to treat students like cattle doesn't mean they're as dumb as the average bovine. The school district says the two campuses in question were chosen for the pilot project because they "have a high rate of truancy and tardiness," but the RFID scheme won't assist at stopping those problems, but merely document them. And in cases where students carry each others' ID cards as a ruse, it may even mask them.

Attendance is the main thrust behind the RFID chips in the student IDs. If the students carry each others IDs or keep them in a container that defeats the reader from counting them, it would seem the money spent here would not be worth it. As far as tracing the students movements inside the school there are already cameras everywhere in every school and on the school grounds that do that already.

School administrators have long been responsible for knowing exactly where each student is at any time of the day. Not only while the student is in school but, on field trips or at any school function outside the school. The school district is responsible for every child in their care until that child is home or with the parents. If a parent come to the school to take their child out, administrators can not say, "Oh well, be patient we'll have to find him/her for you because, right now we don't know where they are. They are supposed to know exactly where that child is at all times when they are in the school district’s care. So, knowing the whereabouts of each child is already something that is being done with or without an RFID chip.

Vincent, not all school students are children. The reasons you state for keeping track of every "child" have some validity when applied to -- say, grades K through 9, but for 9 through 12, those reasons won't stand close analysis.

Force: A high school junior or senior may be a "kid" but probably not a "child." And in some cases certainly not, because they could well be past the age which the Lege has chosen as the cut-off date for the definition of "child." And of course, "kid" is not a term that has any legal significance at all.

What I'm suggesting is that it is unrealistic to apply the North Side ISD thinking in such a broad manner. Grades in high school can and should be treated differently than the lower grades. Vincent's comments indicate why the thinking and logic of school administrators needs to be -- well, re-thought:

"The school district," writes Vincent, "is responsible for every child in their care until that child is home or with the parents." I don't think so. What about the students who drive their own vehicles to school? Or those who go from school directly to an after-school job? Or those who have babies of their own and go to some place after school to be with their own babies other than "home with the parents"? And what about married students? Jeeze, they are already emancipated and considered to be adults.

Basically, the North Side ISD is really doing a bureaucratic CYA operation. And it is just easier from a bureaucratic perspective to paint with a too-broad brush than it is to make a rule that deals with students as individuals rather than as a herd of cattle.

Clearly this is not a well thought out idea. I hope they did not squander too much cash on this loser.

But van Gough, systems successfully account for their charges without being able for any given staffer to know exactly where that person is at any given moment. I've worked in prisons and know that nobody knows exactly where any given inmate is at any specific time. They know where he is supposed to be. but their are many variable- unscheduled clinic visit, in transit between dorm unit and work place. Etc. And if prisons cannot give an instaneous account of the exact whereabouts of prisoners, do you seriously think schools can. Even if that goal were desirable, which is open to discussion.

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